VMware Cloud on AWS

VMware Cloud on AWS

/ johannstander / Leave a comment

At the recent AWS re:invent conference in Las Vegas, VMware announced a bunch of new features for VMC on AWS.   Here is a complete list of the new features with some already being available and others in preview, which means they might not apply to all customers or AWS regions:

  • VMware site recovery service
    • This new service provides a great use case for an end-to-end DR solution, which simplifies DR operations, faster time-to-protect and removes the requirements for a second data center.
    • Build on top of VMware Site Recovery Manager with vSphere Replication, the service protects workloads between an on-premises data center and VMC on AWS, as well as between different instances of VMC on AWS.
  • 1 and 3-year subscriptions
    • Provide significant cost savings
    • Additional cost savings available base on the number of eligible on-premise product license you own (Hybrid loyalty program)
  • VMware Hybrid Cloud Extension (Preview)
    • In short, this is an add-on SaaS offering which will provide large-scale migration between your on-premise environment running vSphere 5.0+ and VMC on AWS.
    • Provides built-in high-performance layer 2 extensions so you will be able to keep the same networks, IP addresses, and routing policies in place during migration.
  • Layer 2 VPN (Preview)
    • Extending Layer 2 networks from an on-premise data center to VMC on AWS, which allows you to migrate VMs to your cloud SDDC without having to change their IP addresses.
    • Only one Layer 2 VPN is supported per cloud SDDC
    • Hybrid Linked Mode is optional for configuring Layer 2 VPN but is required for cold migration and migration with vMotion between your on-premises data center and cloud SDDC.
    • In your on-premise data center, you can use NSX or configure a Standalone Edge.
  • L3 VPN Generic Download (Preview)
    • This will reduce configuration issues with IPsec deployments since you will be able to download a generic configuration after VPN is configured, which provides all the parameters that need to be set on remote VPN device.
  • AWS Direct Connect
    • High speed, reliable and private network connectivity to an on-premise data center.
    • Single or Multiple DX links option available.
    • While connecting to an SDDC, customers can choose a Private VIF, Public VIF, or both VIF options.
      • Private VIF – carry vMotion and ESXi management traffic
      • Public VIF – optional, and used to establish VPN tunnel and carry management appliance and workload VM traffic.
    • VMC on AWS scale
      • Supports 32 host clusters
      • Multiple SDDC per organization
      • 10 Clusters per SDDC (future)
    • VMC on AWS regions
      • New region US East (N. Virginia)
    • Support for Wavefront by VMware
      • Collects data from application metrics collectors (Java, Ruby, Python, and more) as well as service metrics collectors (MySQL, Pivotal, Kubernetes, AWS, and more)
      • Allows customer to visualize and troubleshooting applications as well as receive alerts.
    • Scripting support
      • API
        • You can use NSX APIs and Power CLI for the Day0 and Day2 automation activities.
      • PowerCLI (preview)
        • A new module has been added since PowerCLI 6.5.4, a which enables the automation and scripting of VMware Cloud on AWS features
      • AWS SDKs (preview)
        • Existing vSphere Automation SDKs for both Python and Java will include functionality for access to VMC on AWS
      • Datacenter CLI (preview)
      • VMC on AWS API is available via a multi-platform simple command line interface
    • AWS service access enhancements
      • You have the choice to access S3 buckets over the internet or over the AWS Connected VPC.
    • VM template support in MVP
      • You can now add VM templates to Content Library, as well as delete and deploy them
    • Live migrations!! (This is a biggy, but still in preview)
      • Live vSphere vMotion will be supported over L2VPN and Direct Connect
      • Need to setup Hybrid Linked Mode (HLM) and L2VPN for this to work
    • vCenter HLM
      • Hybrid link mode sounds similar to enhanced linked mode but differs in requirements, how they work, and what problem each solves. William wrote a great blog describing the differences.
      • Supports vCenter Servers with an embedded or external PSC.
      • Support a single on-premise vCenter Server or multiple on-premise vCenter Servers that are joined to the same SSO domain.
    • External Storage access from inside Guest VM
      • NFS, SMB and iSCSI storage protocols are validated over following networks:
        • AWS Elastic Network Interface (ENI)
        • VMware Cloud on AWS Compute Gateway (CGW)
        • VMware Cloud on AWS Internet Gateway (IGW)